I disagree with Oldmac, USB2 has plenty of disadvantages so I think it would a bad move to shift to USB2. PC users might need a faster option than USB but Apple users already have it and it's much more reliable.

USB sucks. It's good for mice, keyboards, and other small bandwidth devices. USB 2 is for really fast mice and keyboards

USB is a serial bus... It may be cheaper to put into a device, but then for some devices like hard drives, you need a power supply where firewire wouldn't. Hopefully Firewire2 will mop the floors with USB2...

Another reason why USB sucks: It's made by intel

Actually, the problem that I have with USB, is that it's like hooking up a hard drive with an old serial port, where firewire most resembles scsi.

Originally posted by G4scott USB sucks. It's good for mice, keyboards, and other small bandwidth devices. USB 2 is for really fast mice and keyboards

USB is a serial bus... It may be cheaper to put into a device, but then for some devices like hard drives, you need a power supply where firewire wouldn't. Hopefully Firewire2 will mop the floors with USB2...

Another reason why USB sucks: It's made by intel

Actually, the problem that I have with USB, is that it's like hooking up a hard drive with an old serial port, where firewire most resembles scsi.

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isn't firewire a serial standard too? it just carries power, as well as data.

Firewire is amazing; it's one of the best technologies to come out of Apple (much better than SCSI). But it's suffering the same fate as many Apple technologies: the lack of marketing and slowness of adoption.

I'm starting to lose confidence in the future of firewire. Firewire hasn't made anywhere near the kinds of market strides I expected and hoped it would.

my old g4 was hit by lightning the other week. everything but my usb hub and my firewire cd burner was hooked into a surge protector.The lightning took out my usb scanner ,printer, and the usb port in my computer itself. bothe the usb hub hub and my cd burner had ground plugs and hooked to the same outlet yet my firewire drive came out unscathed. that is why i love firewire either that or i hate usb for being such a good cinductor.

From the developer point of view is USB2 far better supported than FireWire. It's almost impossible to get simple and easy support for developing FireWire peripherals. The low level is good documented, but the high level and application layer software is difficult to master.

FireWire is only suitable for developers with high volume and enough money. Chipsets for FireWire are twice the price of the USB chipsets and twice the board area as well. And the fee for a vendor identifier is four times more expensive...

I bet that USB2 will find a broader acceptance very soon. Well, at least I like it!

i believe that the royalties for firewire have been significantly diminished if not completely done away with by now. i do know that the Firewire SDK is public source for the taking. So your point is basically lost.

(Bringing back an old thread.) The truth is that FireWire is vastly inferior to any USB connection for everyday use. Here are the reasons why:

1) Apple totes FireWire's support of hot-plugging, but hot-plugging FireWire devices is extremely risky for the device because the design of the plug allows for shorts to happen on the connection if the plug is not inserted perfectly. You run the risk of damaging your video camera, your audio interface, or your 1 TB hard drive containing your life's work.

2) Apple totes FireWire's support of daisy chaining devices, but this concept is flawed and impractical for many power-hungry FireWire devices. The fact is that performance suffers on the host device in particular, and while this may not be a problem for hard drives where only things like read/write speed are affected, it certainly is an issue when, for example, your audio interface suddenly can't handle the buffer at typical sample rates.

3) FireWire interfaces are notorious for failing when multiple devices are plugged in. Devices receive fluctuating streams of power and may not maintain an adequate signal, especially when one device is switched off or another device plugged into the interface is switched on. It's almost as if all the FireWire ports are acting as one, and in order to do anything simple such as switching off a device, you absolutely must turn off the computer and switch off every device, lest you spoil the other devices with power surges, etc.

Such problems exist for devices which conform to FireWire standardthat is to say, the problems are not caused by the devices but rather by FireWire's inferior engineering.

1) Apple totes FireWire's support of hot-plugging, but hot-plugging FireWire devices is extremely risky for the device because the design of the plug allows for shorts to happen on the connection if the plug is not inserted perfectly. You run the risk of damaging your video camera, your audio interface, or your 1 TB hard drive containing your life's work.

2) Apple totes FireWire's support of daisy chaining devices, but this concept is flawed and impractical for many power-hungry FireWire devices. The fact is that performance suffers on the host device in particular, and while this may not be a problem for hard drives where only things like read/write speed are affected, it certainly is an issue when, for example, your audio interface suddenly can't handle the buffer at typical sample rates.

3) FireWire interfaces are notorious for failing when multiple devices are plugged in. Devices receive fluctuating streams of power and may not maintain an adequate signal, especially when one device is switched off or another device plugged into the interface is switched on. It's almost as if all the FireWire ports are acting as one, and in order to do anything simple such as switching off a device, you absolutely must turn off the computer and switch off every device, lest you spoil the other devices with power surges, etc.

Such problems exist for devices which conform to FireWire standardthat is to say, the problems are not caused by the devices but rather by FireWire's inferior engineering.

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What are you, an Intel employee? For one thing, it's weird to resurrect such a ridiculously old thread (6 years! Wow, that might be a record!). For another thing, you fail to mention USB's faults such as sustained data rate.

And this is your first and only post so far on the boards? I think I smell troll...

I'm merely pointing out that it's irresponsible for a company to push unreliable, unpredictable features onto new technology in a world where technological advances equate to advances in reliability and predictability.

I was in the studio recently with an engineer using a G4, and the problem associated with plugging multiple devices into the same interface occurred when he had multiple FireWire hard drives plugged. The 500GB MyBook drive was not receiving power from the machine; he had to reboot his computer, which solved the problem.

Quote

For one thing, it's weird to resurrect such a ridiculously old thread (6 years! Wow, that might be a record!). For another thing, you fail to mention USB's faults such as sustained data rate.

And this is your first and only post so far on the boards? I think I smell troll...

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I happened upon this post when trying to solve some of my own recent problems withsurprisemy audio interface, my 500 GB hard drive, and my video camera. I'm dumbfounded at how people jump on the FireWire bandwagon when considering that proper FireWire functionality is contingent upon things which are often times outside the user's control, not to mention outside the user's care (e.g. plugging in a 6-pin connector slightly offset in one direction such that a short occurs).

Mac users and PC users each have their own separate problems, but it bothers me when one group purposely overlooks their own problems in order to feel better than the other group.

Furthermore, even if I were an Intel employee (which I'm not ), I'm unsure how that is even remotely relevant considering that Apple now uses Intel processors.

...
I was in the studio recently with an engineer using a G4, and the problem associated with plugging multiple devices into the same interface occurred when he had multiple FireWire hard drives plugged. The 500GB MyBook drive was not receiving power from the machine; he had to reboot his computer, which solved the problem. ...

I work as IT for a very big university in northern california. Out of all the MacPro motherboards (and the iMacs we have for the labs), we never had USB fail on them, only firewire.

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So would you like for Apple to drop the Ethernet port on its computers and eliminate that "redundant" port? After all you could just plug in a USB ethernet adapter if you needed to use "old fashioned" wired networking....

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